


Imagine A Better Place

by softmoonlight



Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Blood, Broken Bones, Brother-Sister Relationships, Buried Alive, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Gen, Leia Organa Needs a Hug, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, Major Character Injury, Post-Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Unknowingly, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:49:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26830945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmoonlight/pseuds/softmoonlight
Summary: Luke had already lost so many people—Ben, his aunt and uncle, Biggs, Dak,Han—and he couldn’t lose her, too. He couldn’t watch anyone else die in front of him, but something aboutLeiaspecifically dying…he didn’t think he could survive it. She was his best friend. They’d been through so much together.Luke needs to save Leia's life when an explosion sends a building collapsing down around them and she suffers a severe injury.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker
Series: Whumptober 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952500
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51
Collections: Whumptober, Whumptober 2020





	Imagine A Better Place

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure when the next one of these will be up because college is really starting to kick my ass, so...
> 
> The prompt choices: caged | **buried alive | collapsed building**

Leia’s force presence pulsed weakly nearby, alarmingly dim, but still there. Still alive.

He had to find her and keep her that way.

“Leia?” he called, as loud as he could. The noise sounded strange and muffled, and he was pretty sure he inhaled most of the particles in the air around him when he spoke.

As he expected, there was no response, and his panic spiked.

She was only a few meters away, but in total darkness and with an entire _building_ collapsed all around them, that might as well have been the other side of the galaxy.

As soon as the dust settled fully, Luke moved, crawling blindly through the bizarrely shaped spaces between debris created by the collapse.

Almost immediately, a sharp piece of _something_ bit into the palm of his flesh hand, and he hissed, pausing to brush off the dust and smaller pebbles already collecting in the wound. It was useless, and he stopped bothering almost right away, deciding he’d been hurt much worse before several times and survived. He would just have to make do. Leia mattered more.

A dull pain pressing against his hip abruptly reminded Luke of the glowrod strapped there. He allowed a moment to curse himself for the oversight in a string of the most profane Huttese he knew. That would help a hell of a lot in an _emergency_ like this one, wouldn’t it?

With some awkward maneuvering, he managed to reach down, pull it closer to his face, and turn it on with only a few extra scrapes to show for it. The light was feeble and flickering, but at least he could see now. He held it in front of his face, scanning the meter or so of visible space. Hopefully Leia wasn’t too far; she’d been right next to him before the explosion.

Squinting, Luke saw one of her legs poking out from behind a large slab of permacrete, bent at a disturbing angle that made him wince in sympathy.

_No time left to lose, then, Skywalker._

He started forward as though possessed, only pausing when the parts of the makeshift tunnel wobbled dangerously around him.

Careful, he reminded himself. Careful. That was what Master Yoda always said, right? Don’t rush, think.

Well, he was _thinking_ that if he didn’t get to Leia soon she would die. Then some other part of his brain reminded him that they’d _both_ die if he brought the whole thing down on top of him in his haste.

Luke sighed deeply and began the agonizing slow crawl on his elbows.

What felt like hours later, he made it to her side. Biting his lip, he used his prosthetic to push the obstructive piece of rubble backward enough to slip through. The debris trembled around him again but held steady eventually.

“Okay, Leia, I’m coming.”

He had to essentially jump over her broken leg somehow, in a place where he couldn’t jump. This proved to be a tangled mess of limbs and whispered apologies to her unconscious body when he inevitably collided with her several times.

Finally, finally , he managed to get to Leia’s other side. He shone the glowrod around the area, taking in the damage up close.

It was…bad.

Leia lay mostly on her back, her face slack in unconsciousness. Her skin was deathly, unnaturally pale. Her right leg was bent to the side, as he’d seen earlier, although at least no bone was showing. A trail of blood trickled from her hair down her temple.

She looked like she was already dead.

_Please not her, please not her._

Luke had already lost so many people—Ben, his aunt and uncle, Biggs, Dak, _Han_ —and he couldn’t lose her, too. He couldn’t watch anyone else die right in front of him, but something about _Leia_ specifically dying…he didn’t think he could survive it. She was his best friend. They’d been through so much together.

There was no question about it. Luke had to wake her up. Without any medpac on hand, that was the most he could do to help her.

That, and he could also wrap her leg in a makeshift tourniquet. He set to that first, since he actually had some clue how to do it. He tore off a sizeable portion of his black shirt and hastily wrapped it around her leg and tied it into a hold. It was pitiful, but it wasn’t like he could do much else. Hell, he didn’t even have something to make a _splint_ with.

Now to wake her up. Which he was going to do…somehow.

He moved back closer to her face, and hesitantly grabbed her shoulders and shook. “Leia. Leia, you have to wake up. _Leia._ ”

It was like shaking a corpse, and he _couldn’t think about her being dead—_

Three more tries, and Luke wanted to scream in frustration. He wished he could just…poke her mind or something, _force_ her to wake up—

Luke froze. Actually, he might be able to do exactly that.

Granted, he’d never been taught it, but he remembered Ben kneeling over him when he’d been knocked out by Tuskens…maybe Ben had just been healing him, but now Luke had the idea in his head and couldn’t let it go. If he could call Leia on Bespin and she heard him from a great distance, maybe he could call to her _through_ consciousness…

Well, it was that or nothing.

Luke shut his eyes, imagining the pain she must be in. He pictured taking some of it himself, easing it away from her, like he always wanted to do with the emotional pain she hid from everyone and pretended like they didn’t know anyway. He reached out, probing at that light presence just in front of him.

_Leia._ Just like Bespin, he called her.

The fourth time, the light suddenly flared just a bit and _clung_ to him. Luke gasped, startled, but then held on tight, and imagined…imagined them underwater, him dragging them both up to the surface, gulping in a deep breath of air.

A tiny hitch of breath in the middle of that ocean, and he opened his eyes.

Leia’s eyes were just barely open, and they were glazed over in unimaginable pain—pain which he could now feel almost as if it was his own—but they were awake. Luke grabbed her hand in his flesh one, and let her squeeze it as hard as she could. She was shuddering with every breath, making him almost wish he hadn’t woken her.

“It’s going to be okay. They saw it happen. They’re coming for us. Soon.” He kept up a nonstop stream of reassurances, hoping they helped even if he had no idea whether some of them were true.

Luke finally realized she was trying to say something when a garbled sound escaped her lips. He leaned his ear closer. “What did you say?”

“Luke…have to…tell you something…”

For some reason, that made his blood run cold. What if she’d found out about _him?_ Leia discovering his secret featured in at least half of his nightmares.

“Tell me,” he said anyway.

“I think…I can…the Force…I think I feel it…too.”

Luke drew back and stared down at her, heart pounding. That made…so much sense, and yet none at all. Why hadn’t he ever felt it before?

But he had, hadn’t he? Bespin. That was probably when she began to suspect, too.

He offered her a weak smile. So he wasn’t the only one left in this. But Leia needed to live whether she had the Force or not.

He imagined a warm blanket cocooning them both, holding them safe together away from all the pain. Leia’s agonized breaths eased ever so slightly.

“We’re gonna make it through this. I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> I just really love the twins okay? They make me happy.
> 
> I realize after writing this that I don't actually know whether forcing consciousness in a severely injured person is a good idea, so don't try this at home I guess.


End file.
